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56 Comments on "Driving 300 Miles On A Single Charge In A Chevrolet Bolt – Video"

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John

Looks good except ego charging cost is too high. Makes no sense because if the battery degradation cost and charging time. My Prius plugin can do 60 miles per gallon ($2 now),which comes down to 30 miles per dollar . Ev go wants $5 per session fee plus 20 cents per minute, that means $17 for 225 miles, which comes down 13.24 mile per dollar

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1 year ago

John

Now if it cost you 10 cents per kwh at home, then it will give you 50 miles per dollar, which is good. But if you have to pay 20 cents per kwh like what I heard in California, then it only gives you 25 mile per dollar.

If you rarely use DCFC, eVgo doesn’t make sense. Better is greenlots or chargepoint. They have flat $5/30 min or $0.20/min without connect fee.

Assuming 125 miles per 30 minutes charge, that works out to 25 miles/dollar. In LA, gas is about $2.60/gal, so Prius would be 23 miles/dollar.

But unlike Prius, Bolt can charge for “free” if one has enough solar capacity. Even if using eVgo sporadically, those with excess solar would be cheaper than Prius.

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1 year ago

Putradude

Here in Quebec, Canada, gas is at $4.35/gal and electricity is at $0,08/khw from the grid. It makes even more sense to go all electric. With the winter we have, the only drawback for now is the small number of recharge station.

Yeah, mine actually did show 121 miles in 30 minutes of charging today.

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1 year ago

jim stack

The EVGO monthly plan at $14.95 and 10 Cents a min is better for most. The more you drive the better it is.
They even has some free cards for the LEAF, Fords and BMW. That is a super deal and lets you know how you will do when you pick a plan.

I had no problem with that, even on a drive from Toronto, ON, to Key West, FL!

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1 year ago

Kdawg

“no problem” = compromise = $

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1 year ago

Ken

Ive been driving electric since 2008. Never used an EV-Go public station. Your car charges at home while you sleep. My home rate is .18 a kwh. Other states pay half that. You are correct that a Prius’s fuel costs the same as an electric car’s juice. But an electric car doesn’t need oil changes, oxygen sensors or water pumps. And i can generate free electricity from solar. You can’t refine your own gas at home.

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1 year ago

Olav

Interesting figures. The Bolt’s twin brother Ampera-e won’t be available in this neck of the woods (Norway) ’till a couple of months from now. But if I use my average home (purely hydro-electric) kWh-price (USD 0.11) for January (higher in winter than in summer here), your figures, the average forex rate of NOK 8.4811 per USD for January and the typical gas price of NOK 15.00/liter = USD 6.81/US gallon (it’s sensibly high-taxed here to discourage C02 emissions), it turns out to be a nearly exact tie: USD 0.11/mile using gas OR electricity. But over a distance of 60 miles I’ll leave behind 0 ounces of CO2 in an Ampera-e, vs upwards of 20 lbs in your plug-in Toyota Prius.

In 60 degree weather my X also beats EPA. Unfortunately in all other temperatures it does worse. Heat and A/C are killers.

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1 year ago

Bill Howland

Great!

100 miles at 60 mph I thought would have hurt the range a bit more, but if not, very good! If he could truly get 315 miles, that is not bad at all. Would have appreciated a bit more info on the ‘propulsion reduced’ – such as how fast the car could go in that speed.

With SparkEV, there’s propulsion reduced at about 20 miles and really reduced at “Low” (charge car now message). I was able to drive at 65 MPH with reduced, but acceleration was sluggish, maybe 50 kW max power as opposed to 120 kW max normally. Since 50kW is more than enough to climb 8% grade, constant speed isn’t much affected.

I didn’t bother finding out how bad “Low” was since I didn’t want to call a tow truck. Fortunately, charger was only a block away.

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1 year ago

Bill Howland

Oh, Ok, I got those messages with my Tesla Roadster also (like 1/3 power or so), but it was plenty so that in most cases it didn’t affect your driving whatsoever. As you say, the primary concern was getting to the next charging point.

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1 year ago

Stimpacker

These sorts of videos do a disservice to EV adoption. We have already established long ago how to get max range. Weather, acceleration, speed, road, etc.

LA driving is not always slow. You’ll piss off other drivers and give EV’s a bad name.

Go find a test track.

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1 year ago

2013Volt

I live in LA and always drive slow, but I stay in the right lane. If it pisses off other drivers that is their problem, not mine.

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1 year ago

CopperRoad

You’re assuming everyone in the world knows what you or the readers here know about BEVs, which is false. Even in Los Angeles, where I live, everyone does not understand how a BEV functions. This video is helpful as it clearly discusses weather, and speed, as factors impacting range. Until the BEV becomes as ubiquitous as the fossil fuel car people who have knowledge with regards to electric vehicles should never stop educating and disseminating information. Lest you forget, the “we” you speak of makes up less than 1% of the global market share.

Or dig a tunnel. With EV, fumes are non-issue, so tunnels could work well.

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1 year ago

Bill Howland

Hey you’re the one constantly bitching about people and other EV owners, and when I ask a reasonable question you don’t bother answering it, to wit, what did Broder say that was substantially wrong as he saw it?

I am putting hard cash down on a new BOLT. I also happen to desire to know how far the thing will go, and each ‘slice of life’ real world test drive tells me more about what I need to know.

I’ve learned far more from this guy than I’ll ever learn from you. Jackals are a dime a dozen.

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1 year ago

Tom

Hypermilling can get you into trouble if you drive in the usual busy mix of traffic. I gave up the technique when I gave up my battery degrading LEAF…

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1 year ago

Dav8or

That’s neat and everything, but the great thing about the Bolt is you can drive it just like a regular ICE car, with all your bad driving habits and still make it to your destination and back. For mass BEV adoption, we need to be celebrating how badly your driving techniques can be and still the car gets you there and back. That’s more impressive to me than a personal challenge.

True, but we’re talking 300 miles. Even 10 miles of downhill like Tejon pass wouldn’t have much impact.

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1 year ago

Pushmi-Pullyu

On the contrary, a significant change in altitude has a significant effect on range. And we’re not talking about 300 miles here, Sparky; we’re talking about the difference between the EPA rating of 238 miles and 300 miles, or 62 miles.

Any properly conducted range test should include a return trip along the same path, with the two distance figures averaged together to cancel out any advantage from altitude change.

According to the article linked below, 1000 ft. of altitude change is good for 6.5 miles in the Tesla Roadster.

Much more likely reason is that it is LA. I routinely get about 6.5 mi/kWh in LA while I only get 4.4 mi/kWh at 70 MPH outside LA. Extrapolating,

240 miles * 6.5 / 4.4 = 355 miles.

This is why I’m amused why he only got 300 miles crawling around in LA, not closer to 400. I guess he drove in freeway like a mad man, or maybe not in LA freeway.

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1 year ago

Pushmi-Pullyu

I’ve never driven in the L.A. area; I didn’t realize it was that mountainous. I was guessing at even less of an altitude change than you suggest.

My point is that we shouldn’t ignore the influence of altitude change. I agree that it’s most likely that most of the difference between reported range and EPA range is simply driving slower. But if there was, say, a 2000′ drop in altitude, that would increase range by an estimated 13 miles, which is 21% of the 62 miles of extra range. Most probably not the most significant factor, but not an insignificant one either.

Let’s at least agree on what we’re disagreeing on, Sparky. You said or implied that altitude change is insignificant regarding EV range. I’m arguing that it certainly is significant in some cases, and that depending on the topography of the region the car was driving through, that may apply here.

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1 year ago

Kdawg

My post wasn’t about the range. It was about how the data can show more kWh usage than what stored in the battery, if downhill regenerative braking adds net energy to the battery.

While SparkEV is advertised as 18.4 kWh, I and others have measured bit higher usable capacity when new. I think GM is understating battery capacity when it comes to BEV.

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1 year ago

Eugene Ruiz

All this technical mumbo-jumbo is useless to the average car-driving schmuck. All soccer-moms care about is how many kids fit in the car, and how much gear they can schlep in comfort. Besides, car dealers will sell you all the useless info and gadgets you can swallow, as long as you are willing to be conned by them. So, if u drive like you should, based on wildly fluctuating road conditions (read unavoidable real life stuff, to put it mildly, unless, of course you live in paradise, or delusion, for that matter), you get what you get when you step on the gas pedal or the juice pedal, whatever the case may be. And penny-pinchers should wait and see how the utility companies handle the spike once EVs take off. Bwa. Ha. Ha. Keep dreaming.

Soccer Mom’s can buy the new Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid (A true Hybrid, with a plug for Electricity, and one for Hydrocarbons!) That caries more kids & more stuff!

And if she actually does plug it in, she might get 30-35 miles without burning those Hydrocarbons she added!

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1 year ago

Bill Howland

Eugene Ruiz when you go to a car dealership you are not supposed to shut your brain off. When I put a deposit down on an previously ordered (by the dealer) Bolt EV, the only option it had I didn’t want was the ‘lane change warning’ crap. The other options I was just fine with: Heated Steering wheel, and heated seats (saves many miles in moderate (30’s-40’s) weather to avoid using the heater). $400 paint job (Royal Metalic Blue) Cloth seats (warmer in winter and cooler in summer than leather), and no fast charger (since we don’t have hardly any around here anyway). As far as utility rates go, widespread adoption of ev’s charging over the ENTIRE midnight period will enable more efficient use of the ‘Grid’ and customers should then insist on lower rates. Rates in the vast majority of the country are reasonable – its only on the coasts where the rates are confiscatory. Many, as I do, can lower their ‘rates’ further by time-of-day charging (where available), and in most areas of the country, through a few solar panels on the roof. – I pay $15.67 a month every month – except for the 1 or 2… Read more »

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1 year ago

Pushmi-Pullyu

You can stretch out the range of any car, gasmobile or BEV, by driving at a slow steady pace, and by using hypermiling techniques.

Personally, I don’t think this sort of article at all helps the reputation of PEVs (Plug-in EVs). It just raises expectations to unrealistic levels. This sort of range has a lot more to do with the hypermiling ability of the driver than with the range ability of the car.

There certainly is a place for articles about hypermiling techniques. But those articles should be clearly labeled as such, and not be tied to the Bolt EV or any other specific car.

On my EV Conversion, I added a display for my batteries voltages and loads, that offered SD Card data logging to an Excel formatable raw file, from which I could pull out each Battery Voltage (x8), & Amps used, for each second!

From that, I could calculate the Watt Seconds, and then divide by 60 for Watt Minutes, divide again by 60 to get Watt Hours, and divide by 1,000 to get kWh! Taking into account a sample distance driven, I could get a best case of about 67-100 Wh/Km driving very easy, and a worse case of 277-285 Wh/Km driving very aggressively, or a spread of about 3X difference between best and worst! My Highway number was about 140 Wh/Km at steady 100 Kph.

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1 year ago

Bill Howland

He wasn’t hypermiling, he drove 60 mph for an hour. The rest of the time he was traffic constrained.

In my area there are often multiple routes that can be taken – the off the beaten path ones only add a few minutes to the trip but make the car run totally electrically – most often the speeds are slower but the route is much more direct than the interstates.

HA! Try that around here bud and see how many times you are stopped by State troupers. You won’t get to your destination in time.

As far as Pushi never driving in Los Angeles, I think by default THAT is a true statement since he hasn’t revealed how many decades it has been since he has driven anywhere. He’s certainly never driven any EV.